


as the tide pulls on you, so will i, too

by astroturfwars



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: i know it's super short but here it is, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 17:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2858531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroturfwars/pseuds/astroturfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kuroo blinks once, blinks twice—blinks a third time for good measure, because she’s still not quite sure if she’s dreaming—and leans a little further over the edge of the outcropping, ignoring the rocks cutting into her stomach as she does. “You’re a mermaid,” she says, because that’s the only thing running through her mind. </p><p>“Nice of you to notice,” the mermaid replies, dry, though on her face flashes a smile as quick as sunlight on the water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as the tide pulls on you, so will i, too

**Author's Note:**

> for oishi, who inspired this au and is also a very dear friend. merry (late) christmas.

The sky is a cloud-smeared portrait, the sun its subject, and Kuroo, out on the cove, pauses briefly in her work to marvel, squinting into the dichotomy of sea and sky. The visor she wears unfashionably low on her forehead is ineffective; her eyes already ache from straining against the light glimmering off ocean water. Her nose would burn otherwise, though, so Kuroo decides to brave the temporary indignity for the hour it will probably take her to find a proper algae sample. 

In her head, she fleshes out a list of things she’ll need to do when she gets back to campus. Take the sample into the lab, transfer her observations from paper to computer, slather her face and shoulders in aloe lotion to ward off any impending dryness. She already knows her roommate, Akaashi, will be rolling her eyes the second Kuroo walks through the door smelling like heat and sand, asking her how many layers of sunscreen she’d had to put on to avoid turning into a lobster. The answer: three, soon to be four if the tide pools just ahead of her don’t turn up anything good. 

Kuroo is careful to pick up her feet as she makes the transition from soft sand to old rock. Here the rise of the earth is uneven, and bumpy-smooth pebbles dig into the bare skin of her soles as she walks out onto a dark crest of stone that flares like an umbrella over a collection of rocks and tide pools. 

The rock is hot when Kuroo lies down on her stomach, head and shoulders hanging over the edge, and into her bones sinks the persuasive weight of the sun, molding her to the outcropping, making her wonder if she’d put enough sunscreen on her back to spare a few minutes for a quick nap. The prospect is tempting, but Kuroo wants to be on her way home before the peak hours of heat; she shakes herself awake, lifts her head to scan the rocky stretch of shore for any promising tide pools, and—

—stops, abrupt, pushing up the brim of her visor to get a better look at a rock sitting high and proud like a miniature island, out of reach of the waves. Atop it, still in the sheer sheen of water that sprays upwards when waves break themselves against the rock, is a girl. 

Kuroo looks at her in bits and pieces, because every inch of her is more transfixing than the last: wide eyes the color of the splintered hulls of sunken warships and the bronze-gold gleam of treasure therein; the sunsoaked shimmer of skin where her breasts curve bare beneath currents of dark hair; the scales that shimmer just below her hips and coalesce into a tail likely as powerful as it is beautiful.

She looks like something out of a legend; and—actually, Kuroo realizes, belated--she is. 

"Hi," Kuroo says, voice creaky like a old mast, because she's heard legends and read theories and studied age-old portraits, but she's never _seen_ a mermaid before. 

"Hello," the mermaid says, and her voice pulls at Kuroo the way the moon does the tides. 

Kuroo blinks once, blinks twice—blinks a third time for good measure, because she’s still not quite sure if she’s dreaming—and leans a little further over the edge of the outcropping, ignoring the rocks cutting into her stomach as she does. “You’re a mermaid,” she says, because that’s the only thing running through her mind. 

“Nice of you to notice,” the mermaid replies, dry, though on her face flashes a smile as quick as sunlight on the water.

Kuroo can do this. She’s been practicing human pleasantries for upwards of twenty years; she can find her tongue to make small talk now, even so stunned. “What’s your name?”

“Daichi,” the mermaid tells her, and no particular ordinance of syllables has ever sounded so beautiful on any tongue, has ever seemed so much like a tidal wave, has ever made Kuroo so lost for all other words. 

Kuroo repeats her name, and the mermaid— _Daichi_ —nods, smiles, straightens up a little. Her tail coils as though it has a mind of its own, and Kuroo pulls her eyes from the bone-white streak of Daichi’s smile to watch the curve of it as it tenses, shifts, dips idly into the water lapping at the edge of her perch. 

“You must have a name, too.”

She does—she _does_ , but what is it, _hell_ — 

“Kuroo—“ there it is, that’s it, familiar and usual though it stutters awkward through her teeth. “It’s Kuroo.”

Daichi tilts her head, and Kuroo is briefly mesmerized by the way her hair shimmers as it shifts. “Kuroo, huh…can you swim?”

“Uh—yeah?”

Another smile, lovely and sharp. “Would you like to?”

Even if this weren’t a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing, even if Daichi weren’t a _mermaid_ —a beautiful girl is asking Kuroo for a swim, and Kuroo couldn’t say no to that even if she wanted to, even if she tried.

Even if she’s now remembering legends of mermaids with razorsharp teeth and fingers like claws and a kiss that could and did kill—

“Yes,” Kuroo says, cutting her knee on uneven rock in her haste to get up. “Yeah, sure.”

The sun still weighs heavy atop sand and sea alike, but the water is cool, and Daichi is waiting, and Kuroo decides she has time to spare.

—

Kuroo watches the sunset from the shore that night.

Her throat aches from hours of constant explanation and conversation—Daichi wants to know everything, refuses half-assed answers and asks clever questions and makes even more clever conclusions—so by the time Kuroo has to go home, her voice is thin and her restraint not much stronger. 

“Where are you going?” Daichi asks. Her hair catches copper fire in the dying light; Kuroo wonders what it would look like under the scrutiny of the full moon. 

It stings to swallow and speak, but Kuroo does anyway. “Home. A few hours inland.”

“Will you…” 

Daichi, when Kuroo looks up, is as pink as the last vestiges of the sun; she crosses her arms under her breasts and stares down a scuttling crab as though it is personally responsible for her mortification, looking like she’s grasping for something to say that won’t leave her flustered.

“Will I what?” Kuroo asks, though she thinks she already knows.

Through a frown honed sharp with irritated embarrassment, Daichi mumbles, “Will you come back?”

There are little indentations in her bottom lip where her sharper teeth have dug into the skin; there is a furrow between her brows, a crinkle at the bridge of her nose, a question in her eyes. 

Kuroo kisses Daichi once, gentle, on the curve of her cheek. “Yeah,” she says, because she doesn't think she could stay away even if she tried. “I will.”


End file.
